In case you haven’t heard it, Pastor Dion shared his stewardship journey with all of us on this week’s episode of The Six entitled, Lotsa Stuff. If you haven’t heard it, I recommend checking it out.

In that same spirit, I thought I would share my own stewardship journey, and encourage some of the others to do the same here. When a church is faced with challenges like St. Matthew is right now, it’s important for all of us to humbly ask for God’s direction as to how He wants us to respond. And hopefully, sharing some of our own stories about giving will help to reveal that plan and unleash God’s blessings upon us and the community we serve.

I was never a giver. When I came to faith as a teenager, the most I would ever do was drop he occasional Lincoln in the plate as it passed (that’s not a penny, by the way…give me a little credit). I subscribed to the mantra that so many sadly fall into--the church has no business telling me what to do with my money, even though I had very little to begin with. Let them be concerned with their stuff--God, Jesus, and communion. I’ll worry about my stuff.

And I continued to see things that way until a few months before Jen and I got married. Her father had taught Crown Financial Ministries classes (a longer, more in-depth version of Good Sense, which I think St. Matthew uses) before and we came across some of the materials during a move. Jen found the text that accompanies the course, Your Money Counts, read it, and insisted that I read it as well before we got married. And I have to say that it really opened my eyes.

I had NO idea that the Bible was so concerned with our finances. I also had no idea how closely related our spiritual and financial lives are. Jesus talked about monetary concepts a lot, because He knew how big a role it played in our lives. But MORE than that, he used monetary concepts to explain truths about our faith lives, because He knew that was one of the things we were most likely to understand. Think about it…the talents, the workers in the vineyard, Jesus exposition of debts forgiven to His Pharisee host, and the list goes on. These weren’t about money…but He knew that one of the best ways to speak to us about faith, was to put it in Wall Street terms.

So from there, I caved and decided to go along with Jen’s suggestion that we tithe once we were married. 10% right off the top, before paying any bills, before buying groceries, etc. And I admit that I was worried. What is something happened? What if we needed that money? Giving it first was really scary, because it took away a big portion of our means, especially since we were already living paycheck to paycheck. But we kept on.

Later that first year, I was in a serious car accident. While I was stopped behind someone waiting to turn, a woman in an SUV nailed my little Saturn from behind going about 50mph. It was an incredibly scary time for Jen, getting the call that something had happened from a husband who was too disoriented to even tell her where he was. But the most frightening thing for us after I recovered was actually what we were going to do about the car.

We were now left with one vehicle between the two of us and we still owed my father some money on the totaled one. We were able to get by with one car for a while because Jen was just staying at home for the most part, but she was about to go back to school and our schedules weren’t going to jive so well for long. Our savings were depleted, and more tuition bills coming in.

But God came through for us. The insurance company gave us just enough to pay off most of the debt on the car. But more miraculously, Jen got a call from her old friend in Texas telling us about a car they had repaired for her grandmother. The grandmother had bouts with schizophrenia, however, and was completely convinced that the car was possessed and refused to go anywhere near it. When her friend’s father heard about our situation, he offered to give us the car for free. All we had to do was go down there and pick it up. So we did. We named the car Legion and we still drive it to this day.

Every year around tax time, we’re forced to look back on our finances. And every year, we are shocked to discover that we actually survived on my meager salary. I’m not exaggerating when I say that we live paycheck to paycheck. According to regional statistics, we are living below the poverty line, though you’d never know to look at us. Things get tighter and tighter every year, yet somehow (and I REALLY have no idea where the money comes from), we make it by. That, to me, is a miracle.

We have been blessed SO much. God has fulfilled His promise to us to provide for our needs and see us through these tough times. And we have tried to respond in kind. When I got a big raise, we asked how we could give more, and decided to start tithing off of our pre-tax income rather than post, as we had been doing. And when we get our income tax refund every year, we tithe off of that too. In our minds, that’s new money, a gift to help replenish our savings, and sustain us through more tough times up ahead. So we respond accordingly by tithing off of that as well. Yes, we still give our time and abilities as much as we can, and for a while, we didn’t have any time for ourselves, we were giving so much to the church. But we still take that 10% right off of the top and give it to God.

I don’t say these things to boast to you about our giving or our faithfulness. I say them for two reasons:

1. To inspire others to share their stories as well about giving and how it’s blessed them, so we may all share in the joy of knowing God’s provision in our lives. We are the body and when one part struggles, we all struggle, and when one is blessed, we all are blessed.

2. To encourage all of us to take this opportunity to humble ourselves before the Lord of all creation and pray about our role here at St. Matthew and how God can use us to raise this church up over the hump and on to new and wonderful journeys ahead in Christ.

So post already!!!!